


Chasing a Spark

by Clockwork



Series: Casting Spells [1]
Category: American Horror Story: Coven
Genre: F/F, Gen, Hell, Papa Legba - Freeform, Post Series, Voodoo, Witchcraft, foxxay - Freeform, trapped in hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 13:26:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15268461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clockwork/pseuds/Clockwork
Summary: Cordelia mourns Misty's loss, but the other witches are having none of that.





	Chasing a Spark

Where once the estate had barely housed a half dozen people including Cordelia, now their rooms were full. The sound of voices was nearly a constant, day and night even after lights were out, and there was always something going on throughout the halls and onto the grounds. 

It was exactly as Cordelia wanted it.

All of those years trying for a child of her own, for an heir to the Goode name if not entirely their reputation, and Cordelia had never realized that nearly everything she truly wanted was already right there within the walls of Miss Robichaux’s Academy for Exceptional Young Ladies. Her young ladies. Both as the caretaker of the school for so many years, and now as the reigning supreme and figurehead.

Girls ran about the school, experimenting with their new life, experimenting with their witchcraft, all the while laughing, and crying, and being right hellions to one another and the staff. They caused havoc, set fires, stayed up late telling horror stories that were nothing compared to the recent history of the Academy, and kept the kitchen busy at all hours of the day and night. Certainly Cordelia had never thought of having an entire house full of children, but it satisfied her needs and desires for a baby of her own quite nicely.

In fact, standing before the Academy, both in that sacred role as supreme as well as the face of a new movement that was sadly already being called a cult, Cordelia realized how much more she had with this outcome rather than a child whose own life would likely have been taken by their father. She had a home, and she had a family. If just in Queenie and Zoe who stood by her not merely as former students, but as equals as well, she had a family who she could trust, one that she could rely on. It was everything she had never known she wanted, and would never have asked the universe for.

Well, nearly everything.

The image Cordelia presented to the girls and the public was that of a secure, strong, and confident woman who could lead her coven straight into the bowels of Hell, if she wanted to. The thing was, if she was honest, that was exactly what Cordelia wanted to do. March herself straight into Hell and demand that what didn’t belong to them. As much as she had gained, Cordelia could not bring herself to overcome what they had lost. What she had lost. Misty Day.

While the tenets and the beliefs of their coven, of the council themselves, said that one accepted when a witch failed the Seven Wonders, Cordelia wasn’t sure she was ready to do that. Not with Misty. Not only had was Misty a stronger witch than the trials she had been through showed her to be, she was one of the few people that Cordelia had felt a connection to. Perhaps the only one that she had truly felt that way with. Hank had been her husband, and they had planned a family together, but Cordelia could accept now that he had been a husband to her, a means of needling her mother, a chance at motherhood, but had she truly loved him? Had there been more there than need and spite and the belief that to be whole and complete as a woman that she needed a husband and a child? 

As the woman she had been, Cordelia might not have known the answer to this, but now, standing proud and strong as supreme she knew the truth. Hank had been a means to an end, and while she would have wished him a better man and not an ending like that, she was more proud of Queenie and her sacrifice than she was of her marriage to Hank.

For a brief and shining moment though, in a moment when the great power of two witches had come together in the one room that had once been her haven, Cordelia had felt something so much greater than what she had once called love. She felt a connection that reminded her of the stories the others would read when she had been but a student in Miss Robichaux’s, apart but part of it all, and never once believing a word of what she had deemed tripe. Stories of love sparking, arcing between two people, changing themselves and their perspective on the world. Cordelia had not believed a word of it then, and considered it lies and silliness even as she had found a man to live her life with. 

All of it had always seemed just words and wishes until the moment that a wild witch from the swamps had delighted in their shared magic and lifted both hands to Cordelia in triumph, a sharing of the moment. 

And in that moment so much had changed. 

Cordelia had known it the moment their hands had touched, felt that spark across her palms and traveling through her arms straight to her heart. Praying that in that moment she saw it in Misty’s eyes as well.

But there had never been time.

The war with Marie and her voodoo, and then she was an ally, and the hunters and the girls and … and her mother. So much of all they endured could have been avoided had Fiona just acted once, just for once, in the interest of anything but her own desires. Instead Cordelia had faced the loss of all of her girls, and in the end lost someone who could have been so much more. 

In the day after stepping up as a blinded witch to face the challenges of the Seven Wonders, Cordelia had not had much time to think about the gaping hole that she could feel festering in the center of her chest. 

Now though the girls were settled in, working on learning and growing as should have been the goal of the Academy for years, and the interviews were tapering off instead of a constant barrage of questions and threats, and Cordelia had time to return to her plants and her magic and her pain.

Moving about the pots and plants, Cordelia gathered bits and pieces as she went to add to a pot that was sitting waiting over a low, blue flame fire. Pasque flower for the moments when the terror of Misty disappearing from her arms left the supreme shaking though she tried to hide it. Wood Betony to secure her in the moment, to ground her in each step she walked. Hawthorn flowers to heal her heart. Monotropa uniflora to separate herself from the pain that was so physical deep within the center of her chest, felt on her fingertips where the sparks had danced when they had celebrated magic in this very room. On that very spot.

The tincture would help get Cordelia through the days, but there was little that helped her at night. Late into the hours so often known by the word witching, the coven’s supreme could be found wandering the halls of the Academy that had always been her home. Her slippered feet barely making a sound over the tiled and woods floors, often wearing a flowing robe over her ghostly grey cami and pants. 

Publicly her fashion reflected who she now was, but that didn’t change the woman she was when she was in her home. Though perhaps she hoped should one of the girls see her, they might well take her for the multitude of ghosts that haunted their New Orleans home. Some welcome. Others most certainly not. Cordelia was not one of them, but during those dark hours she often felt like one of them. Even if she wasn’t. Not yet. She still possessed her own soul, and while she might well have considered bartering for what she desperately yearned for, she hadn’t done so. Yet.

She did though often return to that spot in the parlor late into the night, stretching herself on the floor where Misty had last lain. Cordelia curled her hand against the carpet atop the spot where the witch had been, where it would have rested against her shoulder were she still there, and she talked. She told Misty about the girls and who was doing well and who would be a handful. She talked about the way the city missed Marie Laveau and adapted to the open witches in their midst. She talked about the weather, about what they had for dinner, about the newest plants that were thriving, and mourned with a woman that wasn’t there over the ones that had shriveled and died despite Cordelia’s best efforts. 

Night after night she came to that spot, laying down on the antique carpet that had been in the mansion for as long as it had existed, and talking to a woman who likely could not hear her. If not for the distance between them, but likely for the sound of her own screams should Cordelia’s memories of hell be any indication. Yet she had to try it, had to remember the witch that had been taken from them, and try and keep a connection with Misty that had blossomed that day and been lost to Cordelia much too soon.

That night she sat down on the floor, tucking her robe about her legs carefully. Sipping at a glass of wine that she carried with her, finishing it before shifting to lay down. A voice stopped her.

“You would think the Supreme would know that you can’t reach Hell with words. Well, not words alone,” Queenie said, leaning against the doorframe. Zoe stood at her side.

“What are you girls doing here?” Cordelia scurried to her feet, toppling her glass as she did and spilling the last dregs of wine over the ancient carpet The wine was ignored as a dark flush crept onto Cordelia’s cheeks and she clutched her robe about herself. “You should be sleeping.”

“So should you,” Zoe pointed out, stepping forward with her hands behind her back. “But instead you sleep here until dawn and creep back to your room. We figure it’s time we put an end to that.”

“Well… I… I appreciate your concern, but it’s really none of your business where I sleep. I thank you for caring though,” she rushed to assure them, knowing that while they were not equals in the coven, they too had literally been to Hell and back. They had a right to care. Not only that but it felt good that they did. No matter how embarrassing it was.

“Oh, it’s not about where you’re sleeping, it’s about you thinking you can lay there and somehow Misty will hear you. We all know she can’t,” Queenie said, following Zoe into the room, something in her hand as well. “So we figure you’ve got two options. You can lay there and cry every night and we can all pretend we don’t know and don’t hear you talking to Misty or…”

Queenie slammed what was in her hand down on the table. Four leaded glass shot glasses rocked against the ebony wood of the table but didn’t fall. 

Cordelia frowned, her head canting as she considered what they meant with this display. It was only as Zoe revealed the bottle of rum in her hand that Cordelia realized what was going on. It wasn’t Captain Morgan’s from the local liquor store. Dust was caked onto the round, dark glass bottle that was encased in a netting of knotted ropes. 

“Where did you get that?”

“She ain’t coming back, so they’re mine now,” Queenie said, gesturing with a wave of her hand for Zoe to hand the bottle over. “They way I see it, we’ve only got one choice. If you want Misty back, this is the way to do it.”

“No. No,” Cordelia said, waving her hand back and forth as if to wave it all away. “Listen, I know that you both mean well, and it’s amazing that you would offer to do this for me but I can’t risk any of you with this. I can’t risk you with him. We are the council now, we are the ruling force, and I can’t let you risk the council for this. For her, or for me.”

Queenie rolled her eyes, gripping the cork hard and giving it a sharp twist so that it opened with a pop. 

“One, we get to make our own decisions about what’s worth it and what isn’t,” Queenie said, watching as Zoe carefully set each of the glasses out, one at a time with a careful hand and a watchful eye. “Two, we are the council of Witches and we are powerful as fuck, Cordelia. We aren’t slashing our wrists. We’re asking someone that we’ve known before if he would do us a favor.”

Cordelia straightened, chin lifting. “Known before? When did you work with him?”

“What do you think happened to Delphine and Marie?” She asked, carefully pouring each glass until it seems they might spill over. Except they didn’t, carefully, magically held in place. Perfect and full and waiting. “We made a deal before, and I think we can make a deal with him now too.”

Cordelia took a step closer though it did nothing to loosen the tightness around her eyes, or her grip on the front of her robe. 

“And just what do you think we have to trade for Misty’s soul? The trial is an agreement, and if she fails to bring herself, they have the right to keep her?” Every word she spoke was pained, fighting the tears that Cordelia could feel stinging her eyes. “And I won’t have either of you risking your souls for hers.”

“Please,” Queenie scoffed rolling her eyes. “I’m not offering up us. I’m offering him something much more powerful and should have already been his,” she said, digging into her pocket and pulling out a small bundle wrapped in black silk. “Now drink your rum and prepare to be nice. You may be the Supreme, but he’s Papa Legba,” she said, picking up one of the shots and downing it in one smooth drink.


End file.
